A long tracking shot across busy Westminster street is spectacular, even if the citizens look cosy enough for Four Weddings and a Funeral. He favours bird’s-eye views of the battlefield. Joe Wright certainly works hard to justify its place in the cinema. Nobody with an interest in the material will often find their attention drifting.ĭarkest Hour remains, however, very much like something the BBC might show on a Sunday night. In the film-makers’ defence, the dispute between Churchill and those who wanted to strike a deal with Hitler is laid out with a clarity that presses home how reasonable the appeasers’ position once seemed. Elsewhere, MPs make sure to remind each other that Lord Halifax is the “foreign secretary”. “He has never forgiven me for supporting his brother’s marriage – to Wallis Simpson,” Churchill, approaching the king’s quarters, says to people who must already know all this. Taking us from Chamberlain’s resignation to the aftermath of Dunkirk, the film resists no opportunity to indulge in clunking exposition.
Sad to relate, Anthony McCarten’s pedestrian script fails to offer any surprises. What more can you do? It’s up to the writers and the director to find new angles on a wearingly familiar story. Though occasionally cross, he most often suggests a larger version of Paddington (hard stares and all). Gary Oldman, though physically less suited than almost any previous Winstonian, acquits himself admirably in this study of the great man’s first weeks in No 10.
They are taught how to enunciate when both cheeks are swollen with padding.
Budding Hardys, Finneys and Coxes learn to smoke cigars while eating steak and kidney pudding. I am unreliably informed that, in the better British drama schools, they offer students classes in Churchill Acting.
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